Cannes International Film Festival kicks off
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Film industry professionals, cinema stars, journalists, and cinephiles from all over the world flocked on Wednesday to the French Riviera to attend the 64th edition of Cannes film festival.
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Chinese actress Fan Bingbing is at the 64th Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, France, on May 11, 2011. The 64th Cannes Film Festival is held from May 11 to 22. |
Europe's biggest film gathering which runs from May 11 to 22 is expected to register more than 10,000 participants from 101 countries with 4,240 films, up by 5 percent from 2010 edition, according to organizers.
American star Robert De Niro, the jury president and eight jurors including actress Uma Thurman, the French director Olivier Assayas, British actor Jude Law and Norwegian author Linn Ullmann opened the mythical festival's red carpet.
2011 session of Cannes festival will raise its curtains with the screening of U.S. director Woody Allen's out-of competition premiere " Midnight in Paris," a romantic comedy which treats the original themes of artistic inspiration and nostalgia through the story of a family traveling to the French capital for business" forced to confront the illusion that a life different from their own is better".
France's first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, who missed the Croisette for the festival's opening ceremony, played small role in Woody Allen's film, of a museum guide.
Italian filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci, whose classics include " Last Tango in Paris" and "The Last Emperor," received an honorary Palme d'Or, a prize created to award "an important filmmaker who never got a Palme d'Or".
Twenty films are competing for 2011 Cannes festival top prize.
In a salute to change in the Middle East, the festival is honouring Egypt as its first "guest country," while a snap documentary of the uprising in Tunisia will be that country's first film in Cannes in 11 years.
Cannes nearly triples in population during the 11-day festival to 200,000, due not only to all the screenings, but also to an international film market where more than 10,000 participants from 101 nations will haggle over the rights to 4,240 films, many of them still in production.
About 700 hundred police officers have been detailed to the festival, where the killing of Osama bin Laden has ramped up security concerns.
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